California: The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece this week on San Francisco’s push to potentially run its voting machines on open-source software. The city has allocated $300,000 to study the possibility and last week Elections Director John Arntz began discussions with Slalom, the consulting firm hired to report on the possible move. The report is expected in early January.

Iowa: Linn County has hired ProCircular, a cybersecurity firm, to review the county’s voter registration and election system. This is a continuation of our efforts to improve the integrity of the voting process to ensure that our systems and records are secure, and that every vote is accurately counted,” Linn County Auditor Joel Miller told The Gazette.

Mississippi: A new feature on the state’s elections website Y’all Vote will now allow residents to verify their registration status. The new “Are You Registered to Vote?” tool requires a user to enter their name, county of residence, date of birth, and the last four digits of their social security number to locate their information in the Statewide Elections Management System. As a security feature, search results list four name and address combinations, requiring the voter to choose the correct one to move forward. Citizens who are found in the database are notified and directed to their polling place. Citizens who are not found in the database after three attempts are directed to their Circuit Clerk for more information.

West Virginia: West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner is teaming up with the West Virginia Air National Guard to secure the state’s voting system. In a press release, Warner says that a National Guard member specializing in cyber systems will join the daily operations of the secretary of state’s office to asses elections systems and monitor computer security.

Wisconsin: The state Elections Commission approved building an e-poll book system that it will share with the state’s municipal clerks at no cost to the clerks. The commission hope to pilot the system in at least three jurisdictions in the 2018 spring elections and have it available statewide in time for the fall 2018 elections. The use of e-poll books will be voluntary.